A Game of Semantics with the President

Immediately below, Guy notes Bill Kristol's assessment that the decision not to send help to Benghazi would have been a presidential decision. That opinion is only reinforced by an interview the President gave a Fox affiliate in Denver:

As Byron York notes, twice the President dodges the question of whether those on the ground in Benghazi were denied requests for help during the attack. Given how many people have now been thrown under the bus to save the President's Benghazi bacon -- the Secretary of State, the intelligence services generally, the CIA -- do you think he'd have any hesitation in outsourcing responsibility for that decision if he could? Don't you think he'd be eager to answer "NO" -- if he could?

All this is devolving into a game of Presidential semantics, reminiscent of parsing the meaning of "is' with Bill Clinton (albeit in a much more serious context). Maybe somone should just ask the President: Were you aware that those under attack in Benghazi asked for help? If so, what was your response?

This just gets worse and worse. If this were a Republican administration, we'd have the media camped out at the houses of the President, the national security advisor, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense and the director of the CIA. These are not questions that requires intense investigation. Did you know of the requests for help? How did you respond? That's it. Not rocket science.

So far, General Petraeus at the CIA is the only one with enough decency to just answer the question. This is what a stonewall looks like . . . and so far,, the press is largely letting him get away with it.

Carol Platt Liebau is an attorney, political commentator and guest radio talk show host based near New York. Learn more about her new book, "Prude: How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Hurts Young Women (and America, Too!)" here.

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